WE RISE IN LIFE TO THE DEGREE TO WHICH WE CAN SOLVE PROBLEMS

A Nation of Problem-Solvers No More?

It’s easy for Thanksgiving to boil down to little more
than turkey, football and travel delays, but many Americans strive to
make it more meaningful. They try to take the focus off of our problems
and to reflect on our many blessings.
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As well they should. Consider the example set by Abraham Lincoln. Our 16th
president was in the middle of a bloody and protracted civil war when
he issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation. “The year that is drawing
toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields
and healthful skies,” it began.
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And frankly, we should be grateful
for our problems as well. We rise in life to the degree to which we can
solve problems. Time and again, from Valley Forge to 9/11, Americans
have faced our problems squarely -- and solved them.
.
But will we always be a nation of problem solvers? Will we always enjoy the unique satisfactions that problem solving brings?
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Nearly
two centuries ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat visiting
America, issued a dire warning. All democracies, he declared, have a
tendency to succumb to a centralized form of government that promises to
solve every problem, but in the process saps its citizens of their
courage, and robs them of their spirit.
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At that point, the power
of government “takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching
over their fates,” he wrote. “It seeks only to keep them fixed
irrevocably in childhood; it likes its citizens to enjoy themselves
provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. … It provides for
their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their
pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry,
regulates their estates, divides their inheritances: can it not take
away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?”
.
Americans
must never succumb to such a power, which would reduce us to “nothing
more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the
government is the shepherd.” Such a “soft despotism” would provide us
with cradle-to-grave security, but at the cost of our humanity. As
social scientist Charles Murray has written, responsibility is what
keeps our lives from being trivial.
Problem solving makes us
stronger, smarter and more confident. Without the ability and the
responsibility to solve the problems we encounter on a regular basis,
neither success nor happiness is possible.
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Historically Americans
have risen to every challenge and have seen opportunities in every
problem we have encountered. But the ambition of the modern welfare
state is to eliminate problems entirely and provide a government
guarantee of security for all.
.
“The real threat is that the promise of American life will be
frittered away for a bag of magic beans called security,” Jonah Goldberg
writes. “Many progressive seem to think that we can transform America
into a vast college campus where food, shelter and recreation are all
provided for us, and the only crime is to be mean to somebody else,
particularly a minority.”
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Such a problem-free state of affairs
would affect not only domestic policy. The ramifications of the
welfare-state mentality also extend to foreign policy. Under such a
mindset, Irving Kristol points out, “The most powerful nations in the
world -- economically, technologically, even militarily -- will become
citadels of resistance and nothing more.”
.
Is the United States
destined to become nothing more than a “citadel of resistance” to the
crimes and outrages of rogue states and terrorist networks? Or will a
vigorous and self-confident United States continue to set the political,
economic and intellectual agendas for the rest of mankind in the 21st
century, just as it has in the 20th century?
.
Much depends on the
strength of the American spirit -- and on the refusal of ordinary
Americans to be seduced by the false promises of the welfare state: a
secure, affluent and problem-free existence.

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About Me

A Texan who loves the truth and hates the lying, cheating, and deliberate prevarication that characterizes so much of our civic discourse these days.
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RIPOSTE, n. 1. Fencing: a quick thrust after parrying a lunge 2. a quick sharp return in speech or action; counterstroke.
- The Random House Dictionary of the English Language...........
You can contact me by sending an email to me at: leorugiens23@gmail.com